8/11 Holo-deck one step closer: http://tinyurl.com/5uusb
\_ Great, then we can spend every episode in the holodeck. Oh wait,
we already did that.
\_ That was only in Voyager. TNG and DS9 had lots of non-holodeck
episodes. - STMG
\_ Actually, TNG was the worst abuser. How many times did the
holodeck computer characters gain true conciousness and try
to take over the ship? The holodeck computer was their
greatest enemy on TNG, not the Borg. DS9 was just boring
until they tried to clone the much better B5 and failed.
\_ 3 times that I can think of, 2 Moriority episodes and the
one where the ship gained consciousness and expressed
itself through the holodeck.
\_ hahahha!! I don't know what episodes you're talking about
so i must not be a nerd! woohoo!

3/21 Browser Plug-In you must get: Ghostery. It gets rid of a bunch of
ad trackers on a web site, resulting in really fast load times.
For example, a typical media site will require 10-15 trackers
(you know, those URLs that track your activities so they can
target you better). Ghostery kills them.
\_ This has been working well for me, and breaks fewer things
...

8/19 Anyone have a good MLC vs. SLC writeup that is less than a year
old? I am investigating making a big SSD order. -ausman
\_ how much performance gain are you expecting from using SSD?
Let's say your 7200RPM yields 70 MB/sec (sustained) read and
your new SSD yields 160 MB/sec read, and that your application
is mostly streaming media (so the platter is continuous read,
...

6/8 Newly wed husband and wife found from old picture that they have
actually crossed path 30yrs ago: http://www.csua.org/u/qwv
My question is how do stories like this find its way to news media? Do
people just go "hey something very interesting happens in our lives.
Let's call up a news agency or two to tell the world about it."?
\_ "Your video will begin after a word from our sponsors."
...

8/16 I just left my employer. They didn't ask to get their HW back.
Is is common for employers to contact me a few months/years later
and ask for their HW back?
\_ Is it an iPhone 9 prototype? :-)
\_ as a matter of fact, it is just a 2 year old laptop
and they don't seem to keep track of inventor
...

12/18 Happy 25th birthday Perl, and FUCK YOU Larry Wall for fucking up
the computer science formalism that sets back compilers development
back for at least a decade:
http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/18/print-happy-25th-birthday-perl
\_ I tried to learn Perl but was scared away by it. Maybe scripting
lanauages have to be like that in order to work well?
...

6/9 I have a pair of Levi's jeans newly purchased (gift) and they are
so damn thin I am afraid they might rip just going into the drier.
WTF has happened to Jeans in the last few decades and which brand
has the highest thickness to cost ratio?
\_ I've been wearing Kirkland jeans from Costco for a few years.
Quality-wise, including thickness to cost ratio, has been very
...

11/20 Are there tools that can justify a chunk of plain ASCII text by
replacing words with words of similar meaning and inserting/removing
commas into the text? I received a 40-line plain text mail where
all the lines are justified on left and right. Every word and comma
is followed by only one space, and every period is followed by two
spaces. The guy is my kid's karate instructor which I don't think is
...

4/20 Is the United States still leading the world in terms of the
computer network industry? Eg, creating the cables, the routers
the software, etc etc. ObCisco, but just wondering if anything
changed much in Layer 1, 2, 3 technologies.
...

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tinyurl.com/5uusb -> www.trnmag.com/Stories/2004/081104/Shifty_tiles_bring_walking_to_VR_Brief_081104.htmlShifty tiles bring walking to VR August 8/11, 2004 Researchers from the University of Tsukuba and ATR Media Information Research Labs in Japan have constructed a moving floor that allows the user to stay in place while walking in a virtual environment. The device makes it possible to literally move through a virtual environment, and could be used to simulate operations like disaster evacuations, according to the researchers. The device, dubbed CirculaFloor, consists of movable sections of floor equipped with ultra-sound sensors that keep track of the floor section positions, and magnetic sensors that keep track of the motion of a user's feet. The floor moves in the opposite direction from the user so that the motion of each step is canceled and the user's position remains fixed in the real world. The floor sections move in all directions, making it possible for the user to freely change direction while walking. The floor provides a relatively natural means of locomotion for virtual reality systems because the sense of distance and orientation while walking is much better than while riding in a vehicle, according to the researchers. They are working on a mechanism that will allow the user to traverse uneven terrain. Practical applications could be possible within five years, according to the researchers. The work is scheduled to be presented at the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Siggraph 2004 conference in Los Angeles, August 8 to 12.